


Potential

by Frayach



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, Poetry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-06
Updated: 2014-11-06
Packaged: 2018-02-24 07:35:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2573465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Frayach/pseuds/Frayach





	Potential

**Potential**

I'm a blood blister,  
a milkweed pod, bloated  
and straining with potential –  
the possibility of terrible things.  


Silly world, you think I didn’t see  
your smirk. You think  
I’ve lost my touch. You think  
my finger is too weak to pull the trigger.  
You think that age and sensible shoes  
make me safe, make me soft  
as pudding.

I have nothing but contempt  
for this place you’ve brought me to.  
Your kidnapping failed.  
I am not complicit in my downfall. I am angry.  
I will strip the walls of their paper. I will  
up end the coffee table. Inside my smile  
are tiger teeth. I laugh at you. My gums  
are pink, and there are a thousand nails  
beneath my tongue. I am a bomb  
filled with shrapnel. I will not  
call in a warning. There will be no time  
to evacuate. You have not earned  
such courtesy.

I seem inert to you. Harmless,  
my sharp edges sanded smooth.  
I wear the camouflage of middle age.  
I have scars, but you can’t see them.  
I have secrets, but you can’t share them.  
I seem pleasant and innocuous. My buttons  
are buttoned, my zippers zipped.  
They say on the news that teenagers  
hunt like packs of rabid dogs – “wilding”  
they call it, carelessly turning an adjective into a verb.  
People are full of fear. They believe danger  
moves in herds, in gangs, in sleeper cells.  
They are wrong.

I am the thing that should haunt your dreams.  
I am the thing for which you should buy alarm systems  
and set trip wires. I will not come through a broken window  
in your basement. I will walk through your front door,  
invited, and perhaps – after all these years – even welcome.  
You will take my coat and say I look well. We will speak  
of inconsequential things. I will listen to you with one ear  
and, with the other, monitor the tick tick tick, the hiss  
of the fuse. I may or may not explode that night,  
but one day or another, I will. It will be messy.  
You will realize that you never really knew me.  
It will cause you to doubt the end of the story.  
It will make “happily ever after” sound like the screeching  
of tires, like a distant collision. It will happen too fast.  
Your fingers will fumble on the dial. Your bloody hands will slip  
on the tourniquet. You will not even have time  
to say my name.


End file.
